Thursday, January 7, 2010

More gaming from a 30 Something

Well, here we go with post two. There is some meaning to the madness for this rambling sort of thing. I wanted to learn how to speak and write better. I remember back in the days before my beautiful wife saved me from a life of depravity and 30+ dating events at Tol's Timeout Lounge (I still shudder when I think of that possibility) I used to tell people that I liked to write. Now, I did write a book once back in college, but it was crap. But the experience of having written in is what I took the enjoyment from. As you can tell from my first post and what we have so far, I'm not a great writer at ALL and I tend to ramble on a little. Perhaps in posting here daily and with some possible encouraging thoughts from any potential readers, I may get a better grasp on the English language.

Well, back on topic, I like to game and this IS a gaming blog (mostly). Today I started the design for a custom Guitar Hero Guitar decal. I managed to get my hands on a second hand guitar at my local Microplay, but it was covered with those idiotic stickers and it ruined the cleaned, polished look of the actual controller. So, I start to remove them. Of course, they are the CRAPPY stickers that tear and peel and leave white gunk all over the place.

Now before someone writes and says "Use GOO GONE!" let me tell ya, I did. It DID remove much of the gunk left on the guitar, but it also removed the printed finish around where the stickers were left.

Ick.

So, now my fake plastic guitar looks stupid. SOOOOO.... I decided to make it a Def Leppard Guitar. Phil Collin, lead guitarist of the band, has a Dracula guitar that looks pretty awesome. But, not being able to find a reasonable image for printing, I decided to skip that idea and simply put the cover of "Hysteria" on there. So far, it looks awesome. If I can figure out how to put an image in here, I'll post the finished product.

The Rock Band/ Guitar Hero style of play is something that I tend to enjoy in spurts. For a time we played it EVERY weekend, and now with kids in the mix and significant distance from where we generally play (50 to 60km round trip depending on route) it now is very rare that we play.
I'm currently running the gamut of wanting to play more often than not, so my wife bites the bullet and plays a little with me.

I recently turned... ahem... 30 plus a few years experience, and decided to finally get the who band kit. I got the World Tour Drums with snazzy cymbols already built in, and I gotta say, I really enjoy playing them. They don't sound as... plasticy as the Rock Band Drums. You can actually hear the music over the whacking of the drum pads, which is always a nice feature. :P

Now, let's get off of the Guitar Hero topic and try another one. Bundle gaming. This is defined by a bundle of games that is sold as a compilation and is generally classic gaming of some sort and is passed off as some super value combo pack. We've all seen them. Now with the advent of Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA), they take these little "arcade" games, bundle em together, and sell em off to people who aren't connected to XBLA. The systems were pawned off with some of the crappier ones at launch (who wants to play Ms. Pacman and Uno over Gears of War people???) and now you are seeming the bundles from Popcaps and even Konami. It's alright having the ability to get a disc with a dozen games on it, but can't they put really good games on there instead of one awesome game (ie: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) and two crap titles that would go with it (Track & Field and some generic shooter). So in the end what you are doing is paying the pricetag for one of them and saying you got value because you got three of them. Blah on that. We all know it's just marketing, but still, imagine how much a disk with three great titles on it would sell? Say, take Castlevania SoN, then add Contra and Super C, and then boom. You got awesome to the power of BOOM.

Ok, time to stop before I ramble on too much. Tomorrow on CD Gaming, learn how to buy and sell games used... and do it for cheaper than anyone else!!!

C

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